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Just two months ago, Airlock Alpha -- then known as SyFy Portal -- ended its spoiler news coverage after more than a decade of finding success with that model.

Spoilers have always been controversial, both with the fans and with the people who make the great television shows sites like Airlock Alpha covers, but has always been a necessary way for some sites to stand above others in a very crowded science-fiction news world.

Michael Hinman, the founder of Airlock Alpha, recently dished on some of the secrets of good spoiler coverage, leaving the industry with a 92 percent spoiler accuracy rate over a 10-year period, to give readers at CliqueClack a bit of insight into how spoilers are done.

"With competition like TV Guide and Entertainment Weekly making more money on a bad day than I would see in a lifetime, I was clearly outmatched, even in this new online world," Hinman said. "But I was determined to succeed, and succeed [I did] thanks to the wonderful, beautiful and cuddly spoiler."

The success of the then SyFy World started when Hinman began receiving spoilers for upcoming "Earth: Final Conflict" episodes in the late 1990s. Those spoilers transformed Hinman's site from just any other site out there to one of the early leading independent sites in science-fiction. Such a success would make him popular at conventions and such, as well as online -- both in good ways and bad ways -- but there were a lot of drawbacks as well.

"The popular belief, one that I help enforce, is that I avoid conventions and such because I have an issue with crowds. While such a phobia does exist, I have been known to overcome fear when I need to (or want to)," Hinman said. "But in reality, conventions had always had negative results for me because fans would want to know what's coming up on their favorite shows, whether I actually knew anything or not, and would get very angry when [I] wouldn't give them the answers they were looking for."

Whether fans agree that spoilers are essential or not, there remains a demand out there for it today, and even Hinman admits he has to pull himself back from reporting a spoiler he's heard through long-developed sources at studios and networks.

"There is a market out there for people who like to start a story, but then flip to the end to see what happens, and then continue reading where they left off to further enjoy the journey to the end they already know," Hinman said. "I mean, did knowing the ship would sink ruin 'Titanic'? Was it hard to watch the Star Wars prequels because you knew what was going to happen to Anakin and Amidala?

"But just because some news outlets like Airlock Alpha and others are moving away from spoilers and scoops doesn't mean the market is going away. In fact, I think it's only growing ... and as long as there's a huge demand for spoilers out there, others will step in to fill it. And sadly, they may not have the same motivations to get more eyeballs watching these shows as we did."

For the complete column, including the typical way spoilers are picked up by such sites, read the full column at CliqueClack by cliquing here.